Archive for the ‘Singapore’ Category

You are banished to Singapore because your visa to India has not been processed yet!

On this trip we decided to stick to countries that either don’t require us (US citizens) to get visas, or if we do need visas, it’s a quick and easy process. Mark wanted to see India next. He looked online and saw that there were 3 visa options. One, you could visit the nearest Indian Embassy and get a visa which would be pasted in your passport before you leave your country. Two, you could go online and get an e-visa, like what we did for Vietnam. And three, we could just show up and get our visa there in India at passport control.

Mark chose the last option. It came with the least amount of work. To me, it seemed like the best course of action. Or at least it did until we checked in at the airport in Hong Kong.

The airlines wanted to see our Indian visas. We didn’t have one yet. “Well, then we can’t let you go,” the agent told us. There was a moment of panic when we thought that we would miss our flight. Then Mark came up with a solution.

We were very early for this flight out of Hong Kong. We also had a ridiculously long layover in Singapore (like 5 hours) before we got on our actual flight to Jaipur. He could submit an e-visa right now and pay extra for a 2-hour speedy processing. We would have our visas before we got on our flight to India.

That would do. Airline agents don’t really care if you have your proper travel documents or not. They only care that they aren’t the ones who get in trouble when you don’t. If things worked out for us, great. If not, we were some poor bastard in Singapore’s problem.

Using the Hong Kong airport’s free wifi, Mark downloaded, filled out, and sent back 2 forms for 2-hour Indian e-visas. Everything was done just in time to get on our plane.

When we got to Singapore, we were stopped. We couldn’t go to the gate for the flight until our documents were straightened out. We went to the business center of the Singapore airport expecting to just check our email and print out our visas. But, the visas weren’t ready.

Our visa photos didn’t have a plain white background. The walls of the airport’s business center were white so, we took some photos there. We emailed them back and waited 2 hours. There was still plenty of time to get this done.

Two hours later and “Huzzah,” the visas were done. The visas came with a note to check to make sure everything was correct. We looked through the PDFs. First was Mark’s visa. His name was spelled correctly. The birthday was correct. Everything seemed in order. Then we looked at the next visa…

It was another copy of Mark’s visa.

“Where’s mine?” I asked.

We called the e-visa company not wanting to wait for an email. “We’re sorry,” the receptionist said, “our offices are closed for the day. Please contact us again tomorrow at 9:00AM local time.”

So we couldn’t go to India that day. Unlike India, as Americans we didn’t need a visa to enter Singapore. Air Asia was really cool and allowed us to change our flight from that day to the next Friday. I don’t even think they charged us anything more than a ticket processing fee which was less than 20USD for both tickets.

Conclusion…

When we finally got to Jaipur, 3 days later, we got off the plane and went to the passport control. There were 3 lines for non-Indians. One, was for people who went to their nearest Indian embassy and had a visa already pasted in their passports. The second was for tourists, like us, who had e-visas. And the third was for people who didn’t have a visa and needed to get one there. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

We spent 2 days in Singapore, which was just fine with me. I LOVE Singapore.

The last time we were in Singapore we saw just about everything we wanted to see. So this time around we focused on quirky things. I went to the website Atlas Obscura to find all the odd things to do in town. My favorite was the Haw Par Village because of the Hell theme. The other things were minor or related to statues and plaques.

Like this:

Singapore is known for being quite expensive, but Mark and I managed to not spend a lot of money by planning ahead of time. We packing everything we wanted to do in just four days. Everyday we got up early and did lots of things before heading back to our hostel at night. We would rest in a more economical country.

The good thing about Singapore is that there is a cheaper version of almost everything you want to do. You could visit the Gardens by the Bay and pay to see everything, pay to see somethings, or you could just stay in the free areas. A majority of the Gardens by the Bay is free. The same is true for Sentosa Island. You could pay to enter Universal Studios or any of the many other attractions. But you could also just walk around then head to the areas with free activities. You’ll still have a great day.

Ritz Art

Mark and I packed our schedule with as many free things as we could. We were going to pick a few non-free things to do, but we didn’t feel the need or have the time. If you love art, Singapore is for you! There were a few free displays of artwork at hotels and malls. Some of them, like at the Ritz-Carlton, came with a pamphlet with explanations. Others came with art experts just dying to talk about the works.

There are many malls in Singapore. You can go from subway station to mall to another mall and back to a new subway station all without going outdoors. At times it seemed that Singapore was just a bunch of interconnected malls that came together and declared itself to be a country. It’s so easy to just spend all your time, and your money, in the really nice malls of Singapore.